Nigeria is on course to at least double its capacity to assemble solar panels by 2031, according to the International Energy Agency. But the Paris-based agency cautioned that the expansion won’t free Africa’s most populous nation from its reliance on imported equipment.
In its Renewables 2026 report, the IEA said a “domestic solar PV manufacturing push is also emerging, led by Nigeria.”
The country is expected to have “around 500 MW/year of module assembly capacity in 2026” and to surpass 1 GW annually by 2031.
The agency was blunt about the limits. “These early-stage ventures are unlikely to materially reduce import dependence during the forecast period,” the report said.
The manufacturing push comes as demand for panels climbs across sub-Saharan Africa. The IEA expects the region to add more than 120 GW of renewable capacity between 2026 and 2031, almost doubling today’s installed base.
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South Africa and Nigeria together account for over 40 percent of that expansion, and solar makes up more than 80 percent of new capacity.
Spread over six years, the regional total works out to roughly 20 GW of additions a year by my arithmetic. That is many times the 1 GW Nigeria could assemble annually by 2031, which helps explain why imports will keep dominating.
The agency raised its forecast for the region by 54 percent from a year earlier. The upgrade rests almost entirely on rooftop and off-grid systems. Distributed solar was revised up by 42 GW, “reflecting faster consumer-led deployment and improved accounting of historically underestimated distributed capacity.”
In Nigeria, policy changes are improving the economics.
“Fuel subsidy removal, mini-grid regulation and the introduction of net billing improve project economics,” the report said.
The IEA noted the growth in the region is driven “less by centralised procurement than by consumers seeking more reliable and affordable electricity amid weak grid reliability, high tariffs, rising diesel generation costs and falling solar PV and battery prices.”
Nigeria is expanding assembly while the global industry is under strain. The IEA said more than 90 percent of major Chinese solar manufacturers reported losses, and over 70 companies have filed for bankruptcy or liquidation since 2024. Global average module prices stayed near $0.12 a watt, “still less than half the pre-2023 levels,” even after rising 10 percent to 30 percent this year.
Solar supply chains “remain highly concentrated in China at every stage, from polysilicon to modules,” the report said. It expects India to be the only other country able to make every major component at scale by 2031. Nigeria isn’t on that list.
The IEA noted that cell and module plants outside China cost less to build than polysilicon or wafer facilities, and that new entrants “need clear competitive advantages in their target markets, such as technological differentiation, policy support, local-content advantages or strong domestic demand.” Of those, domestic demand is the one Nigeria arguably has. The others are less clear.
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The IEA said regional deployment remains “well below the substantial potential.” It named “grid capacity constraints and transmission bottlenecks” as the largest barriers to utility-scale projects, particularly in Nigeria and South Africa. “Government utility offtaker risk, weak revenue collection, and procurement uncertainty continues to undermine project bankability,” it added.
Distributed solar faces its own obstacles. The report cited “limited local-currency financing access, foreign exchange volatility and import policy uncertainty.” Those are significant risks for any assembler that buys imported cells and components priced in dollars.
In an accelerated case, the IEA said regional renewable additions could be 46 percent higher than in its main forecast. For Nigeria, that scenario “assumes that grid constraints and financing or bankability barriers are resolved, allowing the full utility-scale PV pipeline to come online.” The report also pointed to access to local-currency financing and continued development of domestic manufacturing as factors that could strengthen distributed solar growth.
Off-Grid Boom
Much of the demand for panels is happening outside official statistics. The IEA estimated that sub-Saharan Africa will install “more than 21 GW” of off-grid solar between 2026 and 2031, “equivalent to the region’s total installed capacity today.” Imports of Chinese panels into Africa rose sharply in March, April and May after the Middle East conflict began, “underscoring growing reliance on decentralised solar solutions.”
Per-capita solar generation in Nigeria and eight other sub-Saharan countries starts at “just tens of kilowatt hours” and rises only modestly through 2031, the report said, leaving it “at only a small fraction of the global average.” The IEA called that gap “one of the largest untapped opportunities in the global energy transition,” provided that investment, financing and grid challenges are addressed.
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